At the age of 8yrs I found Tennis, a sport that would be my first loved sport, even though later in life I would compete as a professional ultra endurance athlete.

It was 1982, I had been watching the likes of Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, John MacEnro for a while and I had fallen in love with the game, so with a state of the art wooden replica Donnay Borg racket, I started playing tennis at my local club, The Highworth Tennis Club.

by the age of 11yrs I had been picked up by the LTA Coaching Program, looking for future players to potentially turn pro, I would end up playing all over the country, but at the age of 14yrs I picked up an injury, it would be a year before I could play competitively again, and by then I missed my window.

At 16yrs I joined the army and got the chance to play for my Regiment after one of my officers saw me play on our barracks courts, to play army tennis back then, it was certainly more an officers sport so being a rifleman was quite unusual.

I would continue to play army tennis throughout my career.

After leaving the army, I managed to get myself noticed during competing in various ultra endurance events and after an article in the London Metro in 2001 I turned to full time running and by 2002 I became a full time professional ultra runner.

The last time I played tennis was just after leaving the army, I wouldn’t pick up a racket again until 2016, 4yrs after retiring from professional running.

In August 2016 I would join my local tennis club where I had started as a child.

I was now 42yrs old, and boy was I rusty!!! The first few months were frustrating! Testing rackets, trying to get back to the form I had in my 20s. Finally after testing over a dozen rackets, I found the Babolat Pure Aero+, the best racket I have ever played with! This racket was like it had been personally designed for me and my game, a racket perfect for the spin player.